A tab paper sheet is a paper sheet with a “tab” indicating an item or title to an A4 or letter paper sheet, and so-called “10-tab style” sheets with 10 tabs, “5-tab style” sheets with five tabs, and the like are prevalent. The standard size of a tab portion is ½″ in case of the letter size, but some tab paper sheets have tabs of other sizes. FIG. 4A shows an example of a “5-tab style” sheet.
Compared to a normal paper sheet, since a tab is attached and a tab paper sheet is normally formed of a paperboard and often causes paper jam at a convey system in a conventional printing apparatus, most of the conventional printing apparatuses do not support a print function on tab paper sheets. However, in recent years, since the technology of sheet convey systems has improved, a printing apparatus can perform a tab paper print process. Accordingly, a printing apparatus called a multi-function machine having a printer function and the like can print a tab generated on a computer via a printer driver.
However, a printing apparatus can only perform a 1-sided print process on tab paper sheets, but cannot normally perform a 2-sided print process due to its convey system. Since the tab paper sheet is made up of a paperboard, it is technically very difficult to reverse the sheet in the 2-sided print process.
Since items or titles to be printed on the tabs of tab paper sheets represent the contents of documents divided by these sheets, it is very important that they can be confirmed from the reverse face side, i.e., they are printed on the reverse faces.
In order to conquer such physical limitation (i.e., a paperboard cannot be reversed) of the printing apparatus, the following method may be adopted. That is, a tab paper sheet with a tab, one face of which has undergone a print process, is removed from printouts output onto an exhaust tray, and is manually reversed. Then, the reversed tab paper sheet is set on a sheet feed tray or manual insert tray to print only on the reverse face of the tab paper sheet.
However, with this method, (1) the user issues a print instruction from an information processing apparatus such as a host computer or the like to print on only one face of each sheet. (2) The user goes to the location of a printing apparatus, removes only tab paper sheets from an exhaust tray, and sets them in a cassette or manual insert tray. (3) The user then issues a print instruction of only tab paper sheets again from the information processing apparatus. Hence, the user must come and go at least twice between the host computer and printing apparatus. Such method not only wastes time but also readily causes operation miscues since user's actions increase.